Economics of biosecurity across levels of decision-making: a
review

Biosecurity is a concept that has important economic, social, ecological and
health-related dimensions. By biosecurity we mean protection of production, ecosystems,
health and the social infrastructure from external threats caused by pests, pathogens and
diseases of various forms and origins. The fact that more goods, transport platforms and
people are moving around the globe at increasing speeds provides unforeseen possibilities
for rapid spread of different types of organisms. This is exacerbated by changes in the
production structures and climate. As a result, both the benefits and the risks of changes
in the food system cross borders more often, leading to an increased demand for
biosecurity policies. Economics can be related to biosecurity in at least three
fundamental ways. First, many of the ultimate or proximate causes of bioinvasions create
economic welfare. Second, bioinvasions result in various types of impacts, many of which
are economic by nature – or at least may be measured in economic terms. Third, the
negative impacts of invasions or their probability of occurrence can often be either
avoided or reduced. These biosecurity policies themselves have economic implications,
which often may be quite different from those caused by the biological hazard itself. A
few reviews of separate components of economics of biosecurity exist, but there have been
no attempts to review the big picture. Instead, the previous reviews have concentrated on
different components of biosecurity such as invasive species or animal diseases. Our aim
is to look at the issue in broad terms, draw some commonalities from the research
conducted, and identify areas in which economic analyses have primarily been conducted and
in which areas there remains work to do. The review includes about 230 studies from all
areas of biosecurity up to the year 2008. The review finds that study of economics of
biosecurity is growing steadily, but is still relatively concentrated on narrow questions,
few countries, few species/diseases and few journals.